Why Google Plus’ Win is Inevitable

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Google’s social network is just over a year old and it is clear that Google Inc. is determined to make it a successful competitor in the social networking community, no matter what it takes.

Here are some of the stats:

Launched publicly in September of last year, the eleven month old ‘identity network’ is definitely posing as a serious threat to the main social networks in today’s society, including Facebook and Twitter. In April of this year, Google announced through their official blog that the social network caters for over 170 million upgraded accounts using the service, 100 million of which are active. With that in mind, the company says it wants to accelerate its efforts “to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.”

And according to ComScore, between the months of November through to June, the social network picked up 66% of unique visits, bringing a total of 110.7 million unique visits in the month of June. Though that is not all, these results were only taken from users logging on via computers, whereas Google’s Vic Gundotra said at the I/O that more people are using the network via their mobile application.

Continuing on from the statistic-wise point of view, Google has confirmed that at their I/O last month, there are more than 250 million total accounts, 150 million of those are active monthly and on a daily basis at least 50% of the total users sign in. This is a huge amount.

From the beginning, I always believed that Google Plus would eventually win the battle, for several reasons which I will go through below, but mainly because it is Google we are talking about. I read an article about a week ago which portrays Google as a “stream,” and I couldn’t believe how true it is. The analogy suggested that Google might not be the biggest in everything they do, but they do ‘dabble’ in a lot of things.

Before I go any further though, I must confess that I am definitely a Google Fanboy, but don’t let that cloud your judgement on the opinions that I throw out here. I am someone who believes that when expressing my opinion, I need to be able to back it up with facts or at least common sense.

Don’t get me wrong, for Google Plus to win the battle it will need to take over from Facebook, which will no doubt be a difficult thing to do, though I strongly believe that it will happen, whether it is in the next year, or in ten years from now.

Google Plus is a better service, and why shouldn’t it be? Like any product or service that comes to the market late, it has the opportunity to watch its main competitors and copy what they do right, and change what they’re doing wrong. Google has had the opportunity to learn from Facebook’s mistakes and build a network completely around an individual’s relationships with different groups of people. Although Facebook does now do a similar thing through its lists feature, it feels like that feature was more or less just placed on top of its other features. Whereas Google Plus has it built into its core.

Now onto my opinion

Google’s dominance in the social networking market is inevitable, and this is why. Google Plus is constantly getting new users to register. Through users already using their other services such as Youtube and Gmail, or through purchasing of an Android phone or tablet which is currently being activated by 1 Million users daily.

These users will follow a very basic process, which many of the major news organisations and blogs have overlooked. Let me put this into a very basic scenario for you:

• ‘User A’ will sign up or upgrade to Google+, see that their friends aren’t there and then close it.
• A month later, ‘User A’ will have a friend (‘User B’) who will do the same thing, register, circle ‘User A’, see little to no activity then leave the network.
• This process will continue to happen over and over again.
• Later on that original person (User A) is going to do something with a Google product that sends them back to Google+ where they will see that ‘User B’ has circled them. Maybe not on the first time around, but eventually. This very basic process will start a conversation which in turn, will generate more activity.

There is a huge positive that Google has on their side, and that is time. They already have the servers to hold the users information and they still have the income that they receive from their advertising. Google doesn’t need users to be ‘active’ straight away like many people believe. If I was running Google Plus, I doubt that I would care that much at such an early stage of the social network whether people were spending hours a day on it and posting numerous posts an
hour.

‘They have the opportunity to wait, be patient and do things right.’

So really, Google+ will be the social network that has the opportunity to stay around for the longest. Yes, Facebook is connected to so many sites, but nowhere near as many as Google has through their other products, such as their Adsense and Analytics programs. Another key reason why Google Plus’ numbers will continue to grow are as follows.

Most companies or schools use the products that their Information Communication Technology (ICT) staff make them. In this day and age, a very small amount of websites wouldn’t have Google Analytics or Adsense connected to it. Once Google integrates these products into Google+, what will happen? The ICT staff will connect their companies or schools to Google+
making others use it.

Why might Google not succeed with this product?

The biggest argument that I have read about stating why Google+ won’t succeed is because everyone is already on Facebook. This is true and is definitely the biggest problem that Google must get people to overcome.

Facebook overthrew Myspace, but this battle is different. Myspace’s majority of users were young. You would struggle to find many people’s parents on it. Whereas Facebook has everyone, including, but not limited to – aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, parents and so on. How does Google accelerate their growth?

Celebrities. These people set trends, trends that any person who isn’t in the main spotlight would spend years trying to begin. They dominate the news, but more importantly, they dominate social networks.

Take Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga for example. Justin has 23 million followers on twitter and Gaga has 27 million. Justin isn’t on Google Plus at the moment, but Lady Gaga is and already has over 3 million followers.

These celebrities rely on these communication tools to stay relevant. Google should use this and do everything in their power to get as many celebrities to their network as possible.

And to conclude…

I never used Buzz or Wave, but I have used Google Plus since the invitation stages. I am still on Facebook as I have my 800+ friends there and I do still like to keep that social aspect alive with my real life friends. However, through Google Plus, I have been involved in Hangouts and conversations that are interesting to me. It’s great that I know when my friends are upset
or have just gone out to dinner, but Plus allows me to communicate with other individuals all around the world that have similar interests.

You can still build relationships with your real life friends on Google+, but you can also create new relationships with those that share common interests.

Success for Google+ is inevitable, whether you like it or not.